FullReads

The four cups were poured, and the little table pushed to the bed, where Rebecca Wright still sat, and Mandana, wiping her eyes, came and joined her. Mrs. Trimble sat in her chair at the end, and Ann trotted about the room in pleased content for a while, and in and out of the closet, as if she still had much to do; then she came and stood opposite Mrs. Trimble. She was very short and small, and there was no painful sense of her being obliged to stand. The four cups were not quite full of cold tea, but there was a clean old tablecloth folded double, and a plate with three pairs of crackers neatly piled, and a small–it must be owned, a very small–piece of hard white cheese. Then, for a treat, in a glass dish, there was a little preserved peach, the last–Miss Rebecca knew it instinctively–of the household stores brought from their old home. It was very sugary, this bit of peach; and as she helped her guests and sister Mandy, Miss Ann Bray said, half unconsciously, as she often had said with less reason in the old days, “Our preserves ain’t so good as usual this year; this is beginning to candy.” Both the guests protested, while Rebecca added that the taste of it carried her back, and made her feel young again. The Brays had always managed to keep one or two peach-trees alive in their corner of a garden. “I’ve been keeping this preserve for a treat,” said her friend. “I’m glad to have you eat some, ‘Becca. Last summer I often wished you was home an’ could come an’ see us, ‘stead o’ being away off to Plainfields.”

The crackers did not taste too dry. Miss Ann took the last of the peach on her own cracker; there could not have been quite a small spoonful, after the others were helped, but she asked them first if they would not have some more. Then there was a silence, and in the silence a wave of tender feeling rose high in the hearts of the four elderly women. At this moment the setting sun flooded the poor plain room with light; the unpainted wood was all of a golden-brown, and Ann Bray, with her gray hair and aged face, stood at the head of the table in a kind of aureole. Mrs. Trimble’s face was all aquiver as she looked at her; she thought of the text about two or three being gathered together, and was half afraid.

“I believe we ought to’ve asked Mis’ Janes if she wouldn’t come up,” said Ann. “She’s real good feelin’, but she’s had it very hard, an’ gits discouraged. I can’t find that she’s ever had anything real pleasant to look back to, as we have. There, next time we’ll make a good heartenin’ time for her too.”

The sorrel horse had taken a long nap by the gnawed fence-rail, and the cool air after sundown made him impatient to be gone. The two friends jolted homeward in the gathering darkness, through the stiffening mud, and neither Mrs. Trimble nor Rebecca Wright said a word until they were out of sight as well as out of sound of the Janes house. Time must elapse before they could reach a more familiar part of the road and resume conversation on its natural level.

“I consider myself to blame,” insisted Mrs. Trimble at last. “I haven’t no words of accusation for nobody else, an’ I ain’t one to take comfort in calling names to the board o’ selec’men. I make no reproaches, an’ I take it all on my own shoulders; but I’m goin’ to stir about me, I tell you! I shall begin early to-morrow. They’re goin’ back to their own house,–it’s been standin’ empty all winter,–an’ the town’s goin’ to give ’em the rent an’ what firewood they need; it won’t come to more than the board’s payin’ out now. An’ you an’ me’ll take this same horse an’ wagon, an’ ride an’ go afoot by turns, an’ git means enough together to buy back their furniture an’ whatever was sold at that plaguey auction; an’ then we’ll put it all back, an’ tell ’em they’ve got to move to a new place, an’ just carry ’em right back again where they come from. An’ don’t you never tell, R’becca, but here I be a widow woman, layin’ up what I make from my farm for nobody knows who, an’ I’m goin’ to do for them Bray girls all I’m a mind to. I should be sca’t to wake up in heaven, an’ hear anybody there ask how the Bray girls was. Don’t talk to me about the town o’ Hampden, an’ don’t ever let me hear the name o’ town poor! I’m ashamed to go home an’ see what’s set out for supper. I wish I’d brought ’em right along.”

“I was goin’ to ask if we couldn’t git the new doctor to go up an’ do somethin’ for poor Ann’s arm,” said Miss Rebecca. “They say he’s very smart. If she could get so’s to braid straw or hook rugs again, she’d soon be earnin’ a little somethin’. An’ may be he could do somethin’ for Mandy’s eyes. They did use to live so neat an’ ladylike. Somehow I couldn’t speak to tell ’em there that ’twas I bought them six best cups an’ saucers, time of the auction; they went very low, as everything else did, an’ I thought I could save it some other way. They shall have ’em back an’ welcome. You’re real whole-hearted, Mis’ Trimble. I expect Ann’ll be sayin’ that her father’s child’n wa’n’t goin’ to be left desolate, an’ that all the bread he cast on the water’s comin’ back through you.”

“I don’t care what she says, dear creatur’!” exclaimed Mrs. Trimble. “I’m full o’ regrets I took time for that installation, an’ set there seepin’ in a lot o’ talk this whole day long, except for its kind of bringin’ us to the Bray girls. I wish to my heart ‘t was to-morrow mornin’ a’ready, an’ I a-startin’ for the selec’men.”

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